The travel industry may be uniquely suited to daydreaming. It is tempting, after all, to imagine what you could be doing if you weren’t stuck in a cubicle.

Rocketmiles, a site that rewards hotel bookings with airline miles, took advantage of that wanderlust in a recent Vine campaign developed with the MileagePlus team at United Airlines, one of the company’s 14 airline partners.

“We’re playing into this goal-attainment psychology for people who have somewhere they want to go,” said Rocketmiles CEO and co-founder Jay Hoffmann.

By tapping into that mentality, Rocketmiles built equity around its “Vacation Faster” tagline and promoted a major partner, he said. Plus, the company got to piggyback off a major brand’s trust with customers.

“Our goal is that people begin to think of Rocketmiles and MileagePlus as a vehicle that will allow them to go on vacation faster,” Hoffmann said.

The campaign centered on a microsite that featured nine Vines showcasing everything from a man swimming through a smack of jellyfish to a skier wiping out on a mountainside. Visitors selected their favorite and entered to win 100,000 miles from MileagePlus, and many tweeted about it. Matt Athanasiou, community manager at Rocketmiles, said tens of thousands entered the campaign, which ran May 12-May 26.

Hoffmann and Athanasiou shared tips for creating an engaging Vine campaign with a small team.

Keep them guessing

When marketing campaigns feature several Vines in one place, such as in a timeline or on a microsite, they should inspire viewers to explore all the content. That’s why Vine videos, which last six seconds or less, must grab viewers’ attention and make them want to watch the rest of the collection, Hoffmann said.

He borrowed the idea from Groupon’s editorial content. Prior to founding Rocketmiles, Hoffmann was Groupon’s vice president and general manager of new business.

The surprise in Rocketmiles’ Vines included a man’s confident golf swing — and unexpected whiff. But Hoffmann said each video also needs to be distinct from the rest. That’s why the team included a serene beach scene in the same collection as the golf flub.

Hoffmann said mixing expected usual vacation experiences with rare ones also reinforced the company’s goal of getting people to dream of travel.

“We thought it would be a bummer if we showed yet another image of the Eiffel Tower,” Hoffmann said. “We’re shooting for something someone may have heard of but they haven’t necessarily been there.”

Put the words to work

Vines are all about video, but it’s important to pair them with the right words to spur action such as a purchase, Athanasiou said. “Show them the video, give them an idea of what to do, and in the text tell them how to do it,” he said.

Brands should not repeat themselves across platforms, even when they’re trying to amplify the same message, Athansiou said. You should include a keyword or phrase in each mention to support search-engine optimization, but you should use them differently in Vine captions than on other platforms. That way followers won’t get bored of seeing the same message everywhere.

Focus your efforts

In a campaign that features several videos, consistency is key, Hoffmann said. To achieve that, he recommended zeroing in on the elements and tools your team is equipped to handle.

“We wouldn’t want to do a Vine video on top of Pinterest on top of a photo book on top of a referral incentive,” he said.

As a first step in simplifying the MileagePlus campaign, Hoffmann said his team eliminated sound from the mix. Without the budget to produce its own videos, the team turned to stock image and video site Shutterstock. This provided them the right visual content, but Hoffmann said the videos did not feature the same sound quality. By removing the audio component, they eliminated a potential threat to the experience.

In the same vein, Athanasiou said the team decided to promote the campaign across platforms but only enabled direct sharing to a single social channel, Twitter.

“We definitely did do some sharing on Facebook, but we wanted the majority of it to be on Twitter so we could have ... one central pool and have them all talking together,” Athanasiou said. This allowed him to devote his attention to the heart of the conversation, he said.